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Unit II: Membrane Fouling
Unit II: Membrane Fouling
MEMBRANE FOULING
Membrane Fouling
Irreversible deposition of retained particles, colloids, macromolecules,
salts, etc., at the membrane surface or inside the membrane at the
pore wall, which causes a continuous flux decline
Membrane fouling
Fouling occurs mainly in case of porous membrane like microfiltration
and ultrafiltration.
In case of microfiltration, the flux decline can reach values more than
90% of the pure water flux.
For a given feed, fouling will depend on the physical and chemical
parameters of the feed such as concentration, temperature, pH, ionic
strength etc,.
J = Jo tn, n<0
Many parameters are derived from fouling tests to describe the fouling
rate by suspended or colloidal dissolved particles
Disadvantage of the fouling tests is that they are based on dead end
filtration, where as commercial applications involve cross flow
separation.
Membrane fouling
SILT DENSITY INDEX (SDI):
Feed is pressurized to 210 kPa and then the time is measured to collect
500 ml of permeate (Δt1).
Then, 15 minutes after the start of the experiment again the time is
measured (Δt1) to collect 500 ml permeate.
Here the measurement time (Δt2) is variable. The plugging index is defined
as follows:
Membrane fouling
SILTING INDEX(SI):
V1 and V2 are selected in a way that the second term becomes unity, so
that we have SI as
Membrane fouling
MEMBRANE FILTRATION INDEX (MFI):
MFI is based on cake filtration model and agrees with many experimental
scenarios as a first scale approximation
Membrane fouling
MEMBRANE FILTRATION INDEX (MFI):